Wednesday, March 03, 2010

"Why Is the GOP Ignoring Ryan's Roadmap?" Simple!

Newsweek asks 'why the GOP ignores Ryan's roadmap.'

Simple. The GOP doesn't get it, (but the TEA Party folks do).

...it's a thoroughly radical idea. But talk to Ryan about the plan, and he'll insist that, despite all evidence to the contrary, drastic as it sounds, the American people are ready for it. "They know the fiscal situation's bad," he tells NEWSWEEK. "They know this debt is wrong. They know we've got a problem." Yet despite its concerns about the deficit, the public is also deeply attached to Social Security and Medicare.

This is the TEA Party's genesis, its oxygen, and its raison d'etre. The TEA Party has absolutely no use for creatures, (R) or (D), who hand out candy--other people's candy--to maintain their comfy offices.

Do I agree with every single item in Ryan's plan? Nope. I'm much more comfortable with a consumption tax than a flat-tax, for example.

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and author of Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution, says that Ryan's plan offers "one of the few serious plans in Washington." Yet he worries that "it is far too serious for today's Republicans."

Would Tommy Thompson endorse the Ryan plan? I doubt it. He's far too 'BigGummint' a guy.

On the other hand, having a 'serious plan' hasn't hurt Ryan's elections, has it? Remember that Ryan's from a heavy-Union district. But it's also useful to remember that those Union folks are private-industry unions. They know how the real world works.

...Asked about the barriers his own party has erected to entitlement reform, his response is a boilerplate dodge that begins, "I think we need to get beyond the old politics." Yet in the Republican Party, the old politics of pandering to seniors and posturing about unnamed spending cuts still rules. "The Ryan Roadmap is a test," says Cato's Tanner, "and right now the Republican Party is failing it."

Indeed they are--which means that a number of them should be looking over their shoulders.

HT: FoxPolitics

1 comment:

Jack Lohman said...

Give me a break. Reverse the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy, reverse the Bush $780 billion giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry (Medicare part D), reverse the 1999 deregulation of the banking industry, reverse the privatized military that costs us triple what our own troops cost, and things won't look so bad after all. And eliminate Ryan's stupid idea of vouchers to a privatized Medicare system and things will be just rosey.

Actually, give politicians a 100% salary increase when they stop taking private bribes and balance the budget and we just may have a workable system.